Hardware and the Fine Print

Monday, November 28, 2005

Gippsland, Victoria, Australia has for years been the home to rumors of a Phantom Cat. In June, a hunter bagged what he claimed to be just such a cat—big, wild, perhaps a puma. The DNA test results are in, and it's just a really huge feral cat:

He estimated it was more than 1.5 metres [almost five feet] long and weighed about 35 kilograms [77 pounds].

A scientist with a 30-year interest in big cat research, Bernie Mace, sent the 600 millimetre long tail to Monash University for testing.

. . . .

"The animal was big enough to be a significant threat to perhaps some of the small wallabies and I think the knowledge that feral cats grow to this size in our wild regions has got to be taken seriously and understood from an ecological point of view," he said.